Water Dogs

October 20, 2008
Robinson's atmospheric and dreary first novel (after story collection Officer Friendly
) revolves around a man gone missing in a blizzard. Bennie, a 20-something college dropout, scratches out a middling existence in rural Maine and lives with his taciturn brother, Littlefield, in their family's rotting mansion. The brothers don't have much going for them, and things get worse after a mishap during a paintball game. During the match, played during a blizzard, Bennie falls into a gorge and badly hurts himself, and a drifter member of the opposing team disappears. His body isn't recovered, and nobody's sure if he just picked up and left town or was murdered. But Littlefield and Bennie's friend Julian both call attention to themselves by behaving strangely, and when Bennie's twin sister, Gwen, comes back for a visit, she and Helen, a young woman working for Julian who catches Bennie's eye, help Bennie ferret out the truth about the missing man. Though the labored shifts between past and present detract from the narrative's understated power, Robinson does a magnificent job of painting a bleak and vivid picture of a rough-hewn community and the bonds that hold it together.

Starred review from November 1, 2008
Family dynamics exert a powerful pull underneath the surface of this debut novel about a game of paintball gone tragically awry.

Robinson (Officer Friendly and Other Stories, 2003) stretches himself with a full-length narrative that initially doesn 't seem to have much more plot than a short story. On Meadow Island, Maine, an isolated community in which everybody has known everybody forever, men who haven 't quite left boyhood behind don 't have much to do but work, drink and play paintball. The war game is an adrenaline rush for Bennie Littlefield and his older brother William, known to all simply as "Littlefield. " As much as Bennie enjoys the weekly competition, he doesn 't take paintball nearly as seriously as Littlefield does. After one of the daylong games ends in a disappointing tie, the teams regroup that evening amid a fierce blizzard to play to win. Bennie falls into a quarry, suffering a broken leg and a head injury, while a mysterious member of the opposition disappears. Did he die? Was he murdered? As circumstantial evidence implicates Littlefield, Bennie reflects on the family history that has brought them to this point. The brothers had an intensely competitive rivalry until the death of their father, a man of military bearing whom even his family called "Coach. " Bennie exhibited promise that seems to have dissipated since he returned home after dropping out of college. Both Littlefield brothers have somehow become townies (the "water dogs " of the title), though their father 's ambition and their mother 's fortune had initially suggested a better future for them. Their mother and Bennie 's twin sister have left the island, and relationships among the four are complex. ( "Don 't be intentionally clueless, " his sister warns Bennie at one point.)

A richly detailed yet elliptical work by an author who trusts readers to fill in the blanks.

(COPYRIGHT (2008) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

December 15, 2008
What are the limits of loyalty toward family? This seems to be the primary question underlying Robinson's debut novel, set in the dreary mud season of late winter in southern Maine. The three Littlefield siblings grew up in a competitive atmospheretheir father was always called "Coach" by everyone who knew himBut now that they are adults, will a crisis allow them to stick together? Or will the cruel truth about one brother's history emerge at last? Sister Gwen graduated from Vassar and is pursuing an acting career in New York. Her brothers reside in the crumbling family house on a small island in Maine. Younger brother Bennie tries to hold things together. Older brother Littlefield is a dark, brooding man who has only known two people in his life who have really understood him: his dad and sometime-girlfriend Martha. When an acquaintance of Martha's disappears during a snowstorm, the older brother is implicated, and this shines a blinding light on the Littlefield family's difficult past. Although it starts off slowly, the mystery of the snowy incident and the revelations from each of the characters' lives add up to an evocative story with a surprising conclusion. Recommended for public libraries where there is strong interest in regional writers of New England.Susanne Wells, P.L. of Cincinnati and Hamilton Cty., OH

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2008
Bennie Littlefield is basically drifting through life as he nears the age of 27, working part-time at an animal hospital and trying to repair his family home on Meadow Island, Maine, where he lives with his older brother, William Jr., whos known simply as Littlefield. Having been trained in the biathlon by his late father, Bennie relishes paintball competitions, and during one of these games in the midst of a snowstorm, his life takes a turn. Bennie, trying to evade opposition shooters, is injured when he falls into a quarry, and a competitor, Ray LaBrecque, goes missing. Police investigating the disappearance focus on Littlefield because of his longtime interest in LaBrecques girlfriend, while Bennie seeks proof of his brothers innocence. Unfortunately, its hard to care much about the characters in Water Dogs (which the Meadow Islanders call themselves), and the books narrative is annoyingly detailed and meandering, lacking the edge and tighter prose of his collection OfficerFriendly and Other Stories (2003). A somewhat disappointing debut from a promising writer.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)